


how lovely are thy dwelling places

by toomanyhometowns



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Choral Music, M/M, Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-03-28
Packaged: 2018-10-11 23:40:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10477179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toomanyhometowns/pseuds/toomanyhometowns
Summary: Enjolras isn't ready to start singing again when all the voices come in for the final phrase of the movement, but it's fine. He mouths along, jaw tight.





	

**Author's Note:**

> thanks, as always, to [psidn](http://archiveofourown.org/users/psidn) for a very speedy beta and for delighting in sadness. <3
> 
> The thing they're singing is [Ein Deutsches Requiem](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJelOS-fjrY), and if you want to have a look at the text you can find it [here](http://www.classical-music.com/article/brahmss-german-requiem-text)

There aren't that many tenors in the choir, so it feels painfully noticeable when Enjolras's voice slips and strains on a note.

He'd felt the tension in his throat building up for a handful of bars, but had thought he could cope with it. It's a tangible pressure, like his grief and exhaustion have united to manifest a hand with which to crush his larynx. He's an experienced enough singer to back off, the other tenors blending to cover his retreat. A rest is coming up soon, anyways.

His eyes burn. He works to relax, somehow, the muscles in his throat. They don't want to let go.

The others hit the rest, basses and alti taking over to echo the soprano-tenor line a heartbreaking fifth down.

It's not even the saddest text, he rationalises, quashing the memory of Lamarque's sunlit kitchen after Combeferre's doctoral defence, the room crowded with laughter. They'd run out of glasses for champagne--Enjolras had drunk his out of a pink mug.

He fixes his gaze on Feuilly's steady motions shepherding them through in 3/4. He attempts to swallow.

Courfeyrac tries to catch his eye, but he can't meet it. He's striking a delicate bargain with his tear ducts, and any external stimulus might disrupt it.

He's not ready to start singing again when all the voices come in for the final phrase of the movement, but it's fine. He mouths along, jaw tight.

There's a twisting harmony carried by the two lower voices. Grantaire's sure counter-tenor usually doesn't stand out like this, Enjolras thinks, but maybe it's always this noticeable from the seat on the borderland between the tenor and alto sections. Enjolras usually sits further away. His skin is pricking with goosebumps, and he feels transparent.

Marie plays the last six bars with a grounded touch, eyes on Feuilly until he brings her to a halt.

"That was good," he says. The words sound shockingly bare in the wake of the music. "Basses, good listening, you didn't rush at all this time. I think we need to go from the B section again, though--sopranos, the top of that first crescendo wasn't quite as confident as I'd like it, and everyone lost momentum as they went into C--so if you could just turn to..." He flicks a couple pages back.

A soprano volunteers, "The last system of 47."

"Thanks," Feuilly says with a smile. "Page 47, the bar before B."

There's a generalized shuffling of music, with which Enjolras falls into line without conscious thought. Page 47. The bar before B. He blinks and the page stops swimming.

Courfeyrac nudges his foot with his own, and raises his eyebrows.

Enjolras finally swallows, and breathes. The vice around his throat has slackened.

When they come in again, his voice obeys as it usually does, as it always should.

\--

It's getting dark when rehearsal ends. They went a little long--they often do, but tonight is the first time Enjolras has felt it quite like this.

He helps Cosette move the chairs to the alcove in the back of the chapel, ferrying stacks of eight one dolly-full at a time. The chore doesn't leave them with much chance to talk with the other choristers as they leave, but they still osmose some knowledge from the chatter. The usual post-rehearsal drinks are being called off due to general fatigue; Eponine got a richly-deserved callback for Carmen.

Combeferre claps a hand on his shoulder as he passes, a quiet, happy air about him. "It's coming together," he says.

Enjolras nods. It's good enough to see Combeferre with a smile on his lips that one slides onto Enjolras's, too. "See you Tuesday?"

"Of course," he says. He zips up his jacket. "Thanks for getting the chairs."

"It's no trouble."

Cosette kisses him on the cheek after he insists he's fine to finish up, and stops by Feuilly on her way out.

Enjolras rests his forehead on the cool metal crossbar of the last chair on his last pile, and closes his eyes.

His lungs segment the pause into breaths; his heart steadily subdivides those further.

By the piano, Grantaire is talking to Marie about plans for the concert. He might be able to get them somebody to run the mics, one of their neighbour's kids.

Enjolras emerges to collect his score and bag, half an intention to wait outside until Grantaire is done. The decision is allowed to dissipate, though, because as soon as he straightens up from packing up his things, Grantaire is there, tugging on a sweater and waving goodbye to Marie. It feels like Enjolras's eyes focus for the first time in hours.

"Is it okay if we take the bus back?" Grantaire asks as his fingers dance their customary check--phone, keys, wallet.

Enjolras holds the door for him. "Is your hip alright?"

He waves a hand noncommittally. "A little tight," he admits, which Enjolras understands as _I need to stretch before bed but I'll probably forget and make it worse._

"Three hours is a lot of sitting," Enjolras says.

He unlocks his bike from the railing around the church gardens and wheels it along, one hand steadying it from the centre of the handlebars. His other hand is busy holding Grantaire's. Enjolras isn't sure who reached for whom, but his arm enjoys the sensation, the connection keeping their stride in time.

"They don't really know who he wrote it for," Grantaire says. "The requiem."

"Wasn't it his mother?" Feuilly had mentioned it when the term first started, that Brahms had written about in his letters. Prouvaire had looked up an excerpt, but Enjolras can now only remember scraps: " _It does not so much change as it builds up and develops,_ " " _when once this sad year is over,_ " " _my dear good mother._ " The words hadn't meant as much at the time.

A half-nod, a tug on his hand like Grantaire wants to gesture, but not more than he wants to hold on. "Maybe, but it was also around when Robert Schumann died, and they'd been close. Well, actually they'd been--he and Clara had vouched for Brahms, and he'd looked up to them, and then when Robert was institutionalized the last time, Brahms visited him on Clara's behalf. He visited him for two years since she wasn't allowed to. So Robert had mentored him, but it hadn't been a--a simple sort of situation." Grantaire shakes his head, a tiny gesture to dislodge the thought. "Either way, after Robert died, it left a mark," he says. "Or I guess, a gap."

Enjolras wonders if the correction was in response to something on his face, but Grantaire is mostly just studying the street.

"I don't know if it was written for Schumann either," Grantaire says, and his thumb runs over the joints of Enjolras's. "Though obviously the thought appeals." Schumann isn't Grantaire's favourite composer to perform, but for as long as Enjolras has known him, Grantaire has collected stories of the man himself. He likes him.

They're the only two waiting at the stop. Enjolras leans his bike against the bench and belatedly realises Grantaire hadn't even brought his. He must've been feeling unfit to ride even before the rehearsal.

A jaw-cracking yawn swamps Enjolras before he can cover his mouth. "I think I might--" he nods to the bench, and Grantaire sits on it first, tugging Enjolras down to join him.

"Come here, you look worn out," he says.

Enjolras had had trouble, once, in resting his head on Grantaire's shoulder. It's easier now to hit just the right position to find comfort. He closes his eyes.

Grantaire's voice is soft. "I got distracted from what I wanted to say, though." Enjolras hums inquiringly. "He wrote it in the vernacular. Not Latin."

A thread of music is still drifting relentlessly through his head, untouched by the sounds of cars passing by. A woman across the street gives her dog indistinct instructions, urging it to heel, or sit, or maybe drop.

Lamarque had had a spaniel; she'd been adopted by the department administrator during that last, long hospital stay. Enjolras saw the two of them on campus last week.

"He opens by blessing the mourners, and closes with the promise that the works of the dead will last," Grantaire says.

For a moment, that clench reasserts its grip on Enjolras's throat. He looks up at Grantaire, who looks older from this angle.

"I thought you might--I don't know," Grantaire says. "But you could say he wrote it for the people, and I thought you might like that."

His words strike home somewhere behind Enjolras's ribs. _Like_ isn't quite the right word for what Enjolras is feeling, something big and uncertain and still sad, but it works. This helps. "Thank you," he says hoarsely.

Grantaire hides a kiss on the crown of Enjolras's head. The woman across the street has convinced the dog to obey or maybe just given up--they've stopped so that the dog can sniff a patch of brick wall.

"The next bus probably won't be for a while," Grantaire says.

"That's fine." Enjolras closes his eyes again. Grantaire's sweater smells like smoke. "We can wait."


End file.
